Earliest flying mammal discovered

[Orangutan]

[Certain forum member mode]
This is an interesting article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6176061.stm
[/Certain forum member mode]

Seriously, Kind of cool article, What do you want to be when you grow up?
I want to be a "lucky palaeomammalogist"
;)

[fuelair]

My, how intelligently designed it was!!!:D :D :rolleyes: :D :D

[SteveGrenard]

And here's news of what may be the youngest baby plesiosaur fossile ever found as well, dating back 70 million years. The "earliest" mammal find according to the article in the OP dates back 125 million or more years.



Reuters

Buenos Aires: Scientists from the United States and Argentina have recovered the fossil skeleton of a young plesiosaur a marine reptile that lived some 70 million years ago in Antarctica, institutes from both countries said yesterday."The fossil remains represent one of the most complete plesiosaur skeletons ever found and is thought to be the best-articulated fossil skeleton ever recovered from Antarctica," the US National Science Foundation said.Long-necked plesiosaurs swam in the oceans in the southern ocean when the Earth was far warmer than it is today, the Foundation said in a joint statement with the Argentine Antarctic Institute, which co-funded the exhibition.The skeleton is about 1.5 metres long, one sixth the size of an adult, and its stomach area was very well-preserved.Volcanism"The researchers speculate volcanism similar to the massive eruption of Mt St Helens in Washington in 1980, may have caused the animal's death," the statement said.Scientists believe the area where the fossil and other partial plesiosaur remains were found may have been a shallow area where marine reptiles gave birth and where young remained until they were big enough to go into open waters.

http://www.gulfnews.com/world/Argentina/10088946.html



Quote from BBC URL in OP:

The researchers said the squirrel-sized animal, which lived at least 125 million years ago, used a fur-covered skin membrane to glide through the air.

The creature was so unusual, they said, it belonged to a new order of mammals.

[Zygar]

[Certain forum member mode]
This is an interesting article.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6176061.stm
[/Certain forum member mode]

Where is he, anyway? Seems like he disappeared when he realized that to read an thread he would have to either unignore all 200 people on his ignore list, or unignore each individual post.

[Schneibster]

There is some very interesting stuff here. I haven't followed paleontology as much as I might recently, and it looks like things are getting really interesting.

Plesiosaurs 70MYA, and mammals 125MYA? Wow, it sounds like the mammals developed at latest late in the Jurassic. Maybe I'm dating myself, but somehow I kinda always thought they came on the scene in the Cretaceous, maybe even late in that period, and helped kill all the dinosaurs off. And it seems like plesiosaurs were pretty successful- the Wikipedia article mentions plesiosaurs in the Triassic! That's a coupla hundred million years, anyway!

I'm gonna have to find a good overview of the current state of paleontology pretty soon, I think. Thanks for this!

[supercorgi]

Cool! A predescesor to Rocky the Flying Squirrel! I wonder if Moose was around then too? :D

Seriously, I wonder how they discerned it was a glider. I wouldn't think the skin would be preserved but maybe there was an impression of it in the rock. I couldn't tell from the photo.

[SteveGrenard]

Wait there's more. Check out:


The Sugar Glider (Petaurus breviceps), sometimes called the Flying Sugar, is a small gliding possum native to eastern and northern mainland Australia, New Guinea, and the Bismarck Archipelago, and introduced to Tasmania.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_glider



And you can buy your very own small gliding mammal as a pet:

http://www.pygmypets.com/sg4.html

http://www.sugar-gliders.com/

The artists conception of this prehistoric find certainly bears a remarkable resemblance to living Sugar Gliders, a type of possum although the head of the re-creation seems more rodent or rat like.

And here's a faux JREF exclusive, a photo of the "living fossil" itself. You can search
"Sugar Gliders" on the web or Google Images for more:

[Kaylee]

Cool! A predescesor to Rocky the Flying Squirrel! I wonder if Moose was around then too? :D

Seriously, I wonder how they discerned it was a glider. I wouldn't think the skin would be preserved but maybe there was an impression of it in the rock. I couldn't tell from the photo.
I was also wondering on what basis the researchers believed that the
...creature was tree-dwelling, nocturnal and, because of its sharp teeth, most likely feasted on a diet of insects.

Thats a heck of a lot to read into fossils! :) But interesting article anyway.

[Cuddles]

You can search "Sugar Gliders" on the web or Google Images for more:

Can and should. They are possibly the cutest things ever invented.

And it seems like plesiosaurs were pretty successful

Surely if they were succesful they wouldn't be living in Scotland?:boxedin:

[SteveGrenard]

. I'm gonna have to find a good overview of the current state of paleontology pretty soon, I think. Thanks for this!

Another recent and very interesting find:


Geologists working in the Wernecke Mountains northeast of Mayo, Yukon, have uncovered microfossils that are twice as old as the dinosaurs.

The recently discovered fossils date back more than 500 million years and predate most forms of life on Earth, Godfrey Nowlan, a paleontologist with the Geological Survey of Canada in Calgary, told CBC News.

"What's really spectacular about these is that we have recovered fossil eggs and embryos — things that were actually soft at the time," Nowlan said.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2006/12/12/fossils-found.html

[CapelDodger]

Thats a heck of a lot to read into fossils! :) But interesting article anyway.


There's been almost a luxury of spectacular finds from China in the last couple of decades, with evidence of soft tissues. Partly the geology and partly advanced methods. "Tree-dwelling" : shape of claws and arrangement of toes; "Nocturnal" : eye-sockets; "diet of insects" : sharp teeth for the chitin (no need if you're after caterpillars) and the wrong toe-arrangement for nut-eaters. Or something. Teeth are very important and every job requires the best tooth, so teeth say a lot about the jobs they do.

[CapelDodger]

Seriously, I wonder how they discerned it was a glider. I wouldn't think the skin would be preserved but maybe there was an impression of it in the rock. I couldn't tell from the photo.
There's an impression of the skin in the rock, but how do they calculate what it weighed? I'd have thought that flying squirrels would have a lower bone-density than the average squirrel, potentially leading to a circular argument.

[Kaylee]

There's been almost a luxury of spectacular finds from China in the last couple of decades, with evidence of soft tissues. Partly the geology and partly advanced methods. "Tree-dwelling" : shape of claws and arrangement of toes; "Nocturnal" : eye-sockets; "diet of insects" : sharp teeth for the chitin (no need if you're after caterpillars) and the wrong toe-arrangement for nut-eaters. Or something. Teeth are very important and every job requires the best tooth, so teeth say a lot about the jobs they do.
So that's how they know! Thanks Capeldodger.